The following discussion of the background art is intended to facilitate an understanding of the present invention only. The discussion is not an acknowledgement or admission that any of the material referred to is or was part of the common general knowledge as at the priority date of the application.
Third parties have proposed various apparatus and associated methodologies for preparing particulate matter for subsequent particle analysis. However, conventional techniques for preparing samples destined for quasi in-situ spectrometric analysis have been found to be generally too slow and do not provide an acceptable free flowing powder without subsequent processing being required.
Each document, reference, patent application or patent cited in this text is expressly incorporated herein in their entirety by reference, which means that it should be read and considered by the reader as part of this text. That the document, reference, patent application or patent cited in this text is not repeated in this text is merely for reasons of conciseness.
It is against this background that the present invention has been developed.